June 13, 2008

The Death Of Newspapers Or The Birth Of 10,000 Nichepapers?

by Piers Fawkes

The comments made recently by Steve Balmer about the death of the newspaper was picked up by many news sites and blogs. It was fairly interesting to see how far his views were spread especially considering that Microsoft hasn’t got a good track record when predicting the future (late to internet, late to mp3 player market, late to cloud computing). When PSFK considers what’s happening in publishing we wondered if he couldn’t be possibly more wrong.

What if newspapers aren’t going to die? What if there were as many newspapers as magazines? Or maybe more? What if they become nichepapers?

When we look at the media that uses paper, there does seem to be a lot of it still about. OK, circulations of newspapers are declining but maybe we should look at how the number of great magazines are flourishing. The democratization of technology in terms of hardware and software (and a far simpler access to networks of freelance contributors) means that beautiful and engaging magazines can be created from a tiny office - or even at home. Magazines like Big or Theme are published by only a few people with big passion. Their readership sizes aren’t as big as most Conde Nast titles, sure, but the economics don’t require them to to be.

The passion and commitment that occurs around the world in small magazine offices can be found everywhere online too. Bloggers everyday wake up, research, ponder and write news stories and opinion pieces. Twitterers leave up-to-the-minute diaries. Comments posters in some way are write letters to the ‘editor’. There’s a lot of content being generated that already can be categorized by genre, style and even location - could some (or all) of it be selected and printed out each day in newspaper form?

A key reason that newspapers and magazines haven’t died even after the invention of the radio then the TV then the web is that printed media has a place - sometimes it’s a moment of reflection or a quick break from the office into a world of gossip or a nice way to start the day across the table from your loved one without having to talk to him or her.

A driving factor behind the declining paper readership could be that today we still are offered very little choice. It’s easy to understand why we turn from papers who gave us news they wanted to give on their terms and g to read millions of websites each day.

Why hasn’t newspaper media gone through the same fragmentation as TV? I still have a choice of very few papers to read each day, but the options of TV channels is mind-melting. Why hasn’t technology come along to allow me to read the paper I want (or think I want)?

The content is available (if a little raw) - it’s just a matter of putting it in the right hands in the right place in the right format. What if technology would allow you to go into your newsagent or newstand and pick from 10,000 papers? Maybe we could see a print on demand machine in the corner?

Instead of talking about the death of newspapers (which I’ve done), maybe it’s time to reconsider how the content generated on the web by so many people on so many topics could actually fuel the relaunch of newspapers as nichepapers.

Article categories: Media & Publishing, Opinion

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4 Responses to “The Death Of Newspapers Or The Birth Of 10,000 Nichepapers?”

  1. Haydn
    Posted from: 83.147.138.108

    June 13th, 2008 at 10:56 am

    My experience of newspapers recently (I write for some of them)is they are perfectly happy to have their future talked down. It allows them to reduce fees and insist on more work. One one paper I write from freelance fees have dived 50% in five years and we now have to source images for many articles. The paper’s profits are very healthy indeed.

  2. Amanda Scriver
    Posted from: 209.250.131.153

    June 16th, 2008 at 10:41 am

    I agree with Haydn that newspapers are still doing well financially. Sure they’ve had to make cuts, but I think people are more frantic than need be. I was reading this article by Diego Vasquez about how the decrease in newspaper circulation is largely business oriented—they’re doing things like voluntarily cutting circulation to outlying areas because of escalating fuel costs etc. (http://www.medialifemagazine.com/artman2/publish/Newspapers_24/Why_papers_are_still_a_good_media_buy.asp). Granted this isn’t always the case, but it does merit consideration. Always two sides, yes?

    Anyway, nichepapers are an interesting concept. If they ever do become an option, I hope they’ll be held to the same accountability standards as newspapers are today. I’ve been working with my team on the http://www.buysafemdia.com site, and I’ve realized the need for media auditing everywhere (at least from a marketer’s perspective). You should check it out. Good post, Piers.

  3. Matthias Weber
    Posted from: 84.144.65.56

    June 24th, 2008 at 8:55 am

    I think we should discuss the transformations the Newspapers are going through a bit more.

    Take The Los Angeles Times for example- according to an article I recently read in Süddeutsche Zeitung, the LA Times is going through a radical change. There are plans of the LAT’s new owner, Sam Zell, to shrink the paper by a couple of dozen pages, there is talk about 82 pages per week. This of course means much shorter articles and with that also less in-depth coverage.

    Already in the last year, Zell had cut the LAT’s budget by 10 Billion Dollars, while the number of editors has been going down since the year 2000 from 1200 to 900. Also the circulation decreased from 1,1 Million to 800.000 copies.

    These may be investor-related issues, but then again they are linked to the constantly decreasing newspaper sales.

    I think large Newspapers with a large editorial staff are an integral part of any democratic society. Who else could provide us with this huge bunch of information every single day? Granted, we still need to use our own head to think, compare and measure the news we are being presented every day.

    I doubt nichepapers could jump in here. I also would argue that magazine business and newspaper business are very different fields to work/publish in. First up a newspaper usually comes daily (or in some cases weekly), while most magazines have a bigger release period (I know there are exceptions).

    Also newspapers usually take a broader look in their topics compared to magazines. The more niche you write, the more you should look at a magazine format. Niche-Magazines are plenty there already, they grow and die, but I doubt there will ever be thus many niche-newspapers.

    The idea of a customizable newspaper is nice, especially the idea of print on demand and selecting different information sources. However one reason to stick with a certain newspaper is its editorial quality that it brings with every issue, every day.

    I think editorial and curational efforts such as done by newspapers coud be getting even more important.

  4. Matthias Weber (PSFK Hamburg)
    Posted from: 84.144.65.56

    June 24th, 2008 at 9:00 am

    Uhm 10 Million Dollars it should of course read in the third paragraph:

    Already in the last year, Zell had cut the LAT’s budget by 10 Million Dollars, while the number of editors has been going down since the year 2000 from 1200 to 900. Also the circulation decreased from 1,1 Million to 800.000 copies.

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